Saturday, August 27, 2011

If prayer can't change God, what good is it? The example of St. Monica

St. Monica, woman of prayer

August
27th, Feast of St. Monica

The proper translation of the
opening prayer of today’s Mass would read something like this: “O God, consoler
of the sorrowing, who mercifully received
the pious tears of blessed Monica for the conversion of her son Augustine,
grant unto us that, by the intervention of these two, we may mourn our sins and
find the indulgence of your grace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ …”

The current translation reads: “God
of mercy, comfort of those in sorrow, the tears of Saint Monica moved you to convert her son Saint
Augustine to the faith of Christ. By their prayers, help us to turn from our
sins and to find your loving forgiveness. Grant this through our Lord Jesus
Christ …”

Notice the significant
difference in the way these two collects present the manner
in which prayer and God’s providence work – in the first, prayer is
incorporated into God’s plan and is received by him as a means to effecting this
plan; in the second, prayer is thought to move and change the divine plan, as
though prayer did violence to the Almighty. Hence, the second prayer is misleading
at best and perhaps even heretical. [however, for a defense of this second
prayer, see
our earlier article, which we still stand by]

But, if we admit that prayer (simply
speaking) cannot move God, what good is it?

God
is the unmoved Mover, prayers do not move him

If we speak simply and plainly,
we must admit that prayers cannot move God. It would be utterly absurd to think
that a creature could move his creator. All created causal power is itself
caused by God – hence, all comes from God as its first cause and, therefore,
nothing can move God. The Trinity is pure act in which there is no potency, no
deficiency, nothing left to be done or completed. Therefore, we assert that God
must be the uncaused Cause and the unmoved Mover.

Looking at it from another
perspective, we mention also that God already loves his creatures perfectly.
How absurd it would be to think that our prayers could make God to love us more!
Is this our God? Does he wait for us to “earn” his love? No, we do not earn God’s
love either through prayer or through any other work – rather, his love moves us to prayer and to other good
works, which in turn help us to be more open to receiving his always perfect
love.

Does
prayer change things? - Two errors to be avoided

St. Thomas Aquinas discusses
the power of prayer most directly in his question of “Whether the prayers of
the saints further predestination?” (ST I, q.23, a.8) His simple answer is, Yes, the prayers of the saints do further
predestination – i.e. prayers really do make a difference, even when it
comes to the divine plan of salvation – but he warns against two errors.

“Concerning this question, there were different errors.
Some, regarding the certainty of divine predestination, said that prayers were
superfluous, as also anything else done to attain salvation; because whether
these things were done or not, the predestined would attain, and the reprobate
would not attain, eternal salvation. But against this opinion are all the
warnings of Holy Scripture, exhorting us to prayer and other good works.

“Others declared that the divine predestination was altered
through prayer. This is stated to have the opinion of the Egyptians, who
thought that the divine ordination, which they called fate, could be frustrated
by certain sacrifices and prayers. Against this also is the authority of
Scripture. For it is said: But the
triumpher in Israel will not spare and will not be moved to repentance (1
Samuel 15:29); and that the gifts and the
calling of God are without repentance (Romans 11:29).

There are two things which we cannot say:

1) Prayers make no difference at all, because everything is
already determined and our free will and good works don’t have any effect on whether
we (or others) are saved.

2) Prayers do violence to the
Most High and force him to change his mind even against his most holy will.

What
good is prayer?

Some will say that prayer doesn’t
really make a difference in the world or in God’s plan, but only helps us to
accept our lot in life. This is a grave error. Prayer really does change
things, it really does make a difference. By prayer, we can do all things – for
prayer is all powerful!

While it is true that prayer
does not (simply and absolutely) change God, it is also true that the good Lord
regularly chooses to wait for our prayers before accomplishing his own will.
Hence, to use a specific example, when God desires to save someone (and we mean
when he desires this simply and absolutely, such that the person is among the
predestined and elect souls who will certainly be saved), he yet chooses not to
save them without their prayers. So, St. Augustine: “He who made you without
you, will not save you without you.” That is, God will not save any who have
attained to the use of reason without also moving them to will salvation and to
merit it through prayers and good works.

Hence, prayer works and makes a
difference not as though it changes God absolutely, but insofar as the Almighty
chooses to receive our prayers as a means of accomplishing what he had already
willed to accomplish from all eternity, namely, the salvation of his elect –
and the divine plan truly would not be
accomplished without our prayers, not because God needs our prayers but
because he has willed that our prayers would be incorporated into his plan.

An
example: Table manners

We might compare this (by way
of analogy, and only by analogy) to the way a father teaches his son table
etiquette.

Imagine that a family is
gathered together at table for the evening meal. The father desires that the
son eat a healthy meal and receive the nourishment which his body requires.
However, the father will not pass the boy the food (which he already desires
him to have) until the child ask for it in the proper manner. Hence, when the
son says: “Father, can I have the potatoes?” The father may well reply, “What
do you say?” When the boy responds, “May I please have the potatoes?” (this
time using both proper grammar and table etiquette), the father is happy to
give the boy a healthy serving of those delectable spuds.

Now, did the supplication of
the boy move the father to give him
the potatoes? In one sense, perhaps yes – insofar as the father chose to wait
for his son’s request. However, simply speaking, the father had already
intended to nourish the boy, and the child’s request was also intended by the
father as a means of accomplishing what he had already planned – and so we say
that, in the plainest sense of the words, the boy did not move his father.

Returning to the question of
how our prayers work in relation to the divine plan, we may now understand the
words of St. John Chrystostom in reference to the prayers of the Canaanite
woman from Matthew 16: “She presses Christ prudently, convincingly, and yet
modestly by his own words; and, by her humble faith and reasoning, she conquers him who was willing to be
conquered by her prayers.” [from the commentary of Fr. Cornelius a’ Lapide]

6
comments:

Thank you for pointing out the questionable translation of the opening prayer of today's liturgy. I had exactly the same reaction that you did when I heard the prayer this morning. As someone who makes his living in part by translating medieval Latin texts into English, I never cease to be amazed by the theological ignorance (and worse) evinced by many of the liturgical translations we are currently saddled with.

II-II, Q. 83, a. 2, c: For we pray not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may impetrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers in other words "that by asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give," as Gregory says (Dial. i, 8)

It is worth noting that St. Thomas, in his commentary on the Lord's Prayer in the Gospel of Matthew, notes the destruction of these two errors. The first is destroyed by acknowledging God as our Father, that is, as someone who cares about us. The second is destroyed by acknowledging that he is "in heaven", thus removing the notion of a changeable disposition. So these two major errors regarding prayer are swept away in the very first line of the prayer Christ gave us as a model of prayer!

Thank you so much for this Father. That table manners analogy is a perfect analogy to use when one is arguing the point with someone who doesnt believe in prayer or argues the use of prayer. This whole article really is great. Please please keep up the great work.